Never, Never
by BellonaBellatrix
Summary: Luna battles her shadows to regain her sense of self. TL
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own the series Harry Potter. I don't own any other character mentioned within.

Author notes: It's been some time since I've written these two and when nokomis305 (on lj) requested it, I wanted to try. This story hasn't been beta-ed and if there are mistakes, they are my own and you can give me a shout.

Pairing: Tom Riddle/ Luna Lovegood  
Prompt: dreamscape  
Rating: PG-13ish, nothing that's terribly high rating's worthy.

Never-Never

Chapter 1

They sometimes asked her what it had been like.

Being a prisoner of the most fierce-some Dark Lord that ever was. Ever will be, heaven willing and hell denying.

"Bad, I suppose. I did die there, after all."

The asker would blink and back away, tilting their head in bewilderment as if trying to hear her heartbeat.

In the literal sense, no, Luna Lovegood was still very much alive. In every other sense…well, let her paint you a picture and then maybe you'll understand. If you could stand to do such a horrible thing…

She was brought before Him in the darkest of circumstances, betrayed by her own father. It may have helped Him feel more tolerant of her than usual. He didn't kill her along with the others.

She met him in a cold room by the fire. _What was it like?_

His long, long fingers draped over the arms of the chair, ghostly white, having absorbed every color in the world. Still not to His liking but tolerable. His eyes weren't blazing as they had been described. They were a deep ember of a soul that was long traveled and had burned out all the unwanted things like a heart.

He was a god. It was like meeting a god. She had never been one for gods, either.

"Do you remember me?"

Was the first thing He said and the last thing she truly remembered. Ironically, she thought with a smile.

"Now I do. From the minute before."

"Ah. It hasn't happened yet. Pity. I had so wanted to speak to you as you will be. No matter."

He looked into her mind and left a bit of Himself. He left a seed that would grow into roots and plant themselves behind her eyes. He took her wonder.

In this self, this vision, there was the world as he saw it. Predictable, full of hate. The only beauty was in magic (and this was the gift) but beyond that, there were voids. Everyone was a void. Life was plain, just sand drifting by a normal hour glass. Yet He.

Yet Himself. He had every color of the world, every emotion in the world (but one—quality over quantity, you do realize). He had the depth of the sea and the moon on the crests; He had the wonder of first sight; He had the most beautiful, astounding works of art that would drive one mad in delirium and the filthiest patches of squalls combined, in his soul.

He was pain and He was pleasure.

Everything else besides Him grew gray and numb and tasteless. The fire was a ghost of itself. The cold air brought no reaction to her body. Sound ceased, her emotion towards the cries of her fellow prisoners ceased.

She looked at Him, the real center of the earth as it was, in pain. Wounded beyond compare and in that, without any basis of comparison. The candle went out.

"I will see you again. I hope you will be…intact for me."

To her recollection, He never saw her again. There would be blank spots in her collections of remembrances, branching out to end up with scratches, a skip of the record.

Instead, she could take the pain like it was quite mundane. Her fellow prisoners would start to cry and scratch at their faces after the month passed. The long hours of being in one place, too long.

She was a great help, a great source of comfort. Because their pain was fire and she was the black hole, her thoughts as plain as dirt to smother theirs.

She lost…everything. When Bellatrix Lestrange journeyed to her cell—their cell—in the guise of her mother, singing a lullaby and offering a suckling, she really…didn't care. In that way, He saved her life. Uninterested and uninteresting, they let her be.

When the war was over, Luna ran, ran, ran to the world where there were wonders. She'd catalogue and search, for hours in bushes and trees, in swamps and deserts. In every corner of the world.

Nothing. She'd write words that were thin as reeds, as empty as Russian dolls. Her words were accurate, nothing more. She was praised for her dry and straightforward presentation.

Then, in the midst of a great Belingers stampede—and yes, she was quite unmoved—Luna met Rolf. She went to dine with him out of boredom. The Belingers could stampede into the sea, for all she cared.

And she didn't.

Rolf came from the life where everything was abnormal, on the fly, and the unusual became that horrible exotic cuisine that needed to be cooked a little longer.

It was obvious why he married Luna. She was so normal that it was love at first sight.

* * *

Luna was starting to feel things in bits and doses.

It started with disillusionment.

That was the beginning of her life after she had had her first child. Strange. She had never known fear before. There was those times of immense loneliness where she'd be too desperate to be kind, to used to being out of the loop to find the capability of putting her foot back in.

She imagined it would be like stepping into a trap and she'd dangle. There were times in school where she felt like the world had moved on without her, her dreams, remaining just that. Fancies. Sometimes she thought she wasn't quite real when no one responded to her, or acknowledged her.

Imagine, then. The horror of finding out you could be loved and you could love. In that way. Oh, it was the good kind of fear. Or so she had heard. You never notice anything so much when you lose it.

This, though. This was the very bad kind.

When her first son started to show, she admitted to puzzlement. She had watched animals give birth, and that was the first sign of fear…though the storm hadn't hit yet. It was going to hurt, very badly.

"Nonsense, love-dove," Rolf said, holding her closely, tightly in a vise, when she confided to him her impending sense of doom. "Nature takes its course. You will be going without magical aid but I feel it's the manner in which we were all meant to be born."

And who said being a mother would be easy? The pain was just the beginning. She didn't quite like Rolf then, but she didn't want to go back on her word, on her observations that aided magical birth was unimaginative. That the act of giving life was the true trick, that transformations and journeys were always painful. Why start off on the wrong foot?

To her credit, she didn't think he'd actually hold her up to it.

"I think…rather, I wonder if Ginny will let our son live with her. Harry always seems so happy with his children," she replied, being honest.

"Pardon?" Rolf asked, stepping back.

"Oh, don't make such a face. Ginny's a very good mother. She yells a bit here and there, but the Lyriks will be mating in the spring. If I can get on with this, we can still make it to observe. I hardly think a screaming baby will match up to the appropriate calls."

"That's…unspeakably cold." Unlike his wife, Rolf believed in social lies, social niceties. This time he was being honest, though.

"But…the experiment was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I know my son is a little late, but he'd surely be-."

"I won't hear another word of this. It's not funny."

Rolf left, and the puzzlement turned into the feeling a mouse might have if it were caught in a trap. Pain, but the general 'how in the world did this happen?' She still had dreams. She had survived Hogwarts to have those dreams that people had degraded her for speaking about.

Now, she couldn't.

Later, Rolf reconsidered. One can't ignore one's wife forever. Pregnancy hormones, he decided. Poor, dear Luna didn't know what she wanted.

"It's not about what we want anymore. He's the one who calls the shots now," Rolf told her kindly. "It's time for us to be adults."

She had never thought of herself as an adult. She wasn't into age-isms. Yet it certainly threw her situation in a harsh illumination. She wasn't going to be a good mother. She was hardly an adult herself.

Her life was over at the ripe old age of 22.

* * *

Luna wanted a way out.

More importantly, she wanted someone to give her a way out. She slept throughout the day longer and longer; any effort to getting out of the bed seemed like the last respects of a caged animal. She was expected to get out of the bed.

Well, then, she was not going to do so.

However, she equally hated the bed. That's how this whole mess had started. Rolf began to think about things differently. He wouldn't touch her anymore, as if the ice inside of her would grow legs and walk on over to a warmer climate.

Luna knew that was impossible and made no sense. He could at least have the courtesy to pretend to be polite while she was housing an insider, an intruder who probably knew how cold his mother's heart had become, just by being near.

Oh, he thought he knew so much, this little person! He didn't know the circumstances and that was important. Oh, Luna would show him. She'd pick the most ill-fated name in history. Hello, Brutus. Hello, Benedict. How are you, Peter?

Possibly Tom. For You-Bloody-Well-Know-Who. That will show them.

Oh, yes. She'll get him when the time was right. She'd have to wait months. Simply months. She started at the ceiling, memorized the walls. The designs grew into forests with no end in sight, and she had a bad moment of thinking they would attack her, the beasts inside of it.

Bad in that she welcomed it.

Luna simply wished for a way out. She listened to Rolf bumbling around in the kitchen and had dark thoughts.

She closed her eyes. Wished for a way out of the chain and ball with a soul and cute grin.

For the first time in _years, _she closed her eyes and dreamed.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Still applies.

Chapter 2

There was no end in sight to the pain.

Luna…

Luna could feel again. She opened her eyes to the sensation of an actual dream and things weren't cold, things weren't black and white…though they were here, technically, but just technically.

She got up, and instead of feeling the weight alone of her child, she felt the child. She felt that she was a mother and it scared her quite badly.

She peered around in the gloom and saw that there were things peering back at her. She didn't care, because she was drowning in memories.

Literally.

Rather in a manner of a pensieve but she was playing a more observational role than one would in a pensieve. Also, a pensieve would have one's own memories. This was a sea of trivial pursuits. Babies grinning toothlessly, for one thing, and large parties, and something with a sea of many colored hard-candied things honking at each other.

There were little, burst of lightening above her head, blue sparks. Will o' wisps, she wondered, and to see it, the sparks illuminated odd, ridged cracks.

One crack ran all the way down the middle, splitting the cave into a left and right side. Red strings hung down like ribbons.

_Surprise, Luna thought dully. This was the worst baby shower possible. _

In the center, she saw…she saw a disintegrating chicken. Maybe it was a disintegrating peanut with bits of fluff attached from the packaging._ It_ was watching a Muggle television. Er, facing in the general direction of the television. And that's when she decided she'll be on her way, thank you very much.

She placed a protective hand over her stomach and walked carefully in the direction that the sparks were leading. Not the best plan. The sparks were…sparking hot, running back and forth like rats in a maze.

There was grayish, reddish water. Inch deep and making her slippers tie-dye. She thought of cotton candy but the smell dissuaded her from making the connection. Thank goodness she wasn't hungry or having a preggers craving.

Only a small area of this place was using the sparks though! That was good…

Until Luna finally realized what this place was.

She was inside a human head, and from the litter lying about, it was not her own headspace. She looked down at the mush gathering around her grandmother's slippers and was at a loss.

She was _feeling_ emotions for the first time in years and it just happened to be in time for pea soup. Luna made a face and tried to walk with dignity towards the light. Probably that was the ear. The light could be taking her towards death and tea (with taxes, always) but it could be a way out.

Instead, it was a door. There was a fifty-fifty possibility, without including standard_ deviation_, that it was the way out or instant death. Well, that made it a hundred percent, then. She couldn't go wrong with those odds.

She entered a very crowded room. It was awe-inspiring, rather. There were clichés of all kinds there and they had gathered to meet and greet. And eat, she noticed, looking directly at a food table. With food on it and everything!

Some man bumped into her, with a mirror attached to hover just in front of his face, and he stared into it, entranced.

"Pardon me," she gave, and he didn't take, continuing to bounce off walls and people.

She made her way to the food bar. Then thought—should she eat anything here? That was against a rule written somewhere in nowhere. Yes, it's an Unspoken rule. Yet she was still hungry.

"All silver?" a man muttered, standing near the bar. He was dressed as a pirate, and Luna was curious as to why. She drifted closer. "Where there's silver, there is gold. Unless he's color-blind."

"I don't see any," she said. The man looked disappointed. "But there could be fillings?"

"…Gold fillings," the man exclaimed and straightened his headwear.

"In and around the mouth area."

"And where would that be, from here?"

"Downwards? I can't imagine the direction."

"That's just fine, love. I think I can manage." And off he went, looking at compass. Across the table, there was a man with knifes in his gloves and a face like licorice. She avoided the area. The craft food was always the dangerous part.

Luna fought the temptation and turned her back on the food, surveying the room.

And then—quite inexplicably— there he was.

Tom. Riddle.

Carbon-copy of the picture she had seen in the old albums at Hogwarts.

He was in the corner of the room, _obscenely _beautiful, and even in the crowd from so many places, he drew stares, demanding attention through aloofness, that painful 'Don't touch' aura.

Deep resentment carved out his features with shade and night and red. But to his credit, his eyes were not red yet. Envy colored his eyes, with green and sharpness and taking the room in with one quick strike. Hunger stained his lips pink. In all her years, in all those stories, he was the original starving wolf.

He was like an ornate knife, shining with figures of angels and devils and trials on the crossroads. Cross-worlds. Everyone there knew instinctively that he was dangerous.

Luna knew this, too. But this was the god as a man. The man who had taken her ability to feel, who had shut the door in her head to lock up her soul. This was the man who had placed her among the living dead.

She wasn't about to avoid saying a peep in his direction! To boot, she was the older one here! Yes, this was true. A boy of sixteen, seventeen, and her, a woman, an adult in her twenties. He should respect his elders naturally. This will give her the ability to beat the living piss out of him.

Riddle was currently in a death glare match with another dark man (who also had the air of chaos around him, a nearly tangible madness) across the room. Both thought they were most dangerous men. So they glared.

Death-glare-dagger of death-old snake eyes-death with glare-evil eye. Like big old tomcats ready to pounce.

Luna interrupted the 'playing-chicken' match without care.

"You, sir, are a dirty, poultry, bum-faced, trouser-less, boa-wearing fink."

Riddle blinked and she could see him mentally curse. He turned to gaze up at her in surprise. It was similar to the surprise a shark would have at seeing the actual puff part of a puffer-fish.

"…Trouser-less?" It was all he seemed to be able to say, and she saw he cast a discrete glance under the table.

This was a dream, you know. Weirder things have happened.

"Yes. I would have heard the swish-swish part if you were actually wearing trousers under those robes."

He regained his…menace, hatred, and at his look, Luna wondered if this had been the best approach. She tried to flounce away, but his grip was razor-quick and he grabbed her wrist tightly.

"And where do you think you're going?" he inquired, faux nice and polished.

"Elsewhere. Far, far away. I have no more to say. That was it. Done. Through. There is no more."

She would have held up her empty hands but he clasped her wrists like a Glorper.

"No…I think you have so much more to tell me. It seemed so important earlier."

He pulled her down into the seat next to him, and ah, the tension war commenced.

"You don't disagree?"

"…With what?"

"With being trouser-less. At that time. You don't deny it."

He studied her. "I believe you just want me to deny it so you can disagree. So you can be disagreeable."

"True, but that doesn't mean you have to agree."

"I'm not going to set myself up to be a fool for a fool."

"All right. Very well."

"…You're from Hogwarts, aren't you." It wasn't really a question.

"How on earth did you know?"

"Ravenclaw…a stubborn, narrow-minded, bookish, power-hungry, little girl, with little to no social graces or manners. No ability to be in the real world, to speak of…"

"There are boys in Ravenclaw, too," she added. "It's the blue nightgown, isn't it? My House was made a fetish by my husband. It wasn't my idea, to be made a fetish."

Riddle blinked. "Did I mention your stupid, cheap choice of clothing? Or lack there of?"

"No, but you looked, and I thought you thought on it."

"I would hardly think about a _thing_ like you…That's it, you've wasted my patience. What's your name?"

"Luna," she answered promptly. He'd know her name eventually. Why fight the tide?

"…All right." He thought he'd have had to force it out of her. "Well, Luna, when I get out of here, I'll be paying you a visit."

"And your name?" she asked, deciding to play dumb.

"…You just came up to me out of the blue and insulted me and I'm to believe you don't know who I am?!"

"I'm just hormonal," Luna replied, motioning to her extra, rather captive, audience. "I felt some rage for a moment. That's nice, it's been awhile."

Besides, the worst he could do was haunt her and rattle chains.

"I'm sorry, really. I know you're a Slytherin. I fell for stereotypical judgment. Surely, you must have done something to deserve what I said. But I'm sorry, this is all quite bewildering."

Riddle stared. She believed she was off the hook…and she had gotten away with it. Hah, success.

"Of course…understandable, understandable," Riddle muttered with his hand still clenched around her wrist. "A total lie but an understandable one. You came over here with a vendetta, Luna. Tell me why."

Luna loved the word 'vendetta'. It sounded so Unspeakable.

"Oh, nothing much at all. I suppose I find it amusing that you tried to destroy the world? Besides that, nothing in particular." She might as well be honest. It was a virtue, after all.

"Ah. And tell me. Beyond what you've already said. Tell me what you think of me then. I'm supposing all my goals had come true, at least."

Good Merlin, he's fishing for compliments! "I don't have any good words for you. Except that you're amazingly beautiful but you know, it wasn't like that at the time. In fact, at that time, many called you ugly. I wouldn't say that, myself, I would say eccentric."

Tom Riddle was caught between being amazing angry, merely irate, or even…not flattered (he's had such comments before though not followed by an 'ugly' addition). Just very confused.

"I hope you enjoyed your rage. It's the last time you'll feel anything. Once I figure out what's going on here. I'm serious, you'd best enjoy yourself while you're intact."

Ah, yes. Intact. This was Lord Voldemort as a young person.

"I'm older than you, you know," she retorted.

"When I figure out who is responsible for this, then, after I take care of them, I'm going to shut that mouth of yours."

"I believe the person who is responsible is over there. Under the spotlight."

For indeed, suddenly, a spotlight had gone off in the cranium, the light originating from the temporal lobe. A candle had gone on with an idea.

"_He wasn't there a moment ago," _Riddle hissed and tightened his grip on her wrist.

Excuses, excuses, Luna thought with a wince. She paid attention to the person in question. He was a…sight to behold, that was for certain.

He was a boy, or…maybe not. It was unclear. He was in-between, and one moment, in the light, he was one person, and the next, another. He was in a brown, almost…molded outfit. A shroud. He had a dagger tied to his waist, one that looked like a tooth of a large animal, and he had a mess of red-hair and piercing green eyes.

"Nice tights," someone muttered, nearby. Luna squinted. The birl was wearing tights of some kind. Great and wonderful and everything, but Luna, like Riddle, wanted to know what all this nonsense was about.

"Hello, all. Hello and goodbye."

Everyone stared, un-amused.

"I wanted to get it over with because odds are, I'm not going to be able to say goodbye to each of you before…you know."

The mood was becoming a bundle of hostility. She felt like playing ball for some reason.

"Anyway, I know this is unexpected. You don't expect to fall asleep and end up in a giant head. I know: the cleverness of me. I'll just keep this to the point."

"It's a head?" Riddle whispered and looked up at the cracks in the ceiling, the clean line of bone and fissures.

"You didn't know _that_, Mr. Riddle?" Luna asked, surprised. She would have thought he would have had a clue with the grinning skull symbol. Riddle glowered.

He sighed. "My name's Peter Pan…you may have heard of me. I was made from wishes, you know, and I had one wish—only one—for myself.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Still applies.

Chapter 3

"I only wished to be a child forever. Only Time, the old crocodile, got me in the end too. It's a shame. But let's get down to it. The reason you are all present is because in some way, each of you is still a child at heart."

This softly spoken, yet confidence brimmed, statement caused a flurry of dissent. In some cases, straight, unmitigated disgust. Riddle himself laughed condescendingly, grinning like a horror.

Most of them were…they were all baring their teeth at Peter Pan like animals. In Luna's experience, the truth always got a reaction, while lies seldom struck their target. In her case, it was true. In Riddle's strange and different yet…essentially…true case.

There were the good Always-Childs and bad (violent) Never-Childs but they were all still children. She had a bad feeling about this.

"Ah, I see I struck a chord," Peter said, grinning and tipping his hat. "What does it matter what I say, though? How about this: this is Never-Never-Land. It was a dream, always. Wendy, the dear heart, caught the same sickness her brothers had, and they slept in fever. Funny, what the minds of children can do.

Then life made people grow up. It made people forget me. None of you care or frankly, give a shit, because you are like me. Selfish, immature, egocentric children."

He sure had a way of making friends.

"You use people to your ends. You cry when you're wounded and you laugh when they bleed. Your own existence revolves around getting that reaction. I understand. I wouldn't give a damn about myself, if I weren't myself. I would laugh at my own pain. But the fact of the matter is I'm not letting any of you wake up until I have the child.

I can narrow it down to the girls. I hope…

One of you dears is with child. The ultimate lock and key to imagination, they say. Anyway. Give me the child and let me be born again. I'll be a real boy, and you can all go on with your lives. Now…will the lucky lady please stand up?"

Luna had a very good reason to believe that she was the only one carrying a child here. Riddle, the fink, knew it too, as she caught the barest hint of a flicker in her direction. She held her breath, expecting him to point her out to their captor.

To her surprise, he remained seated, his eyes carefully averted.

Peter laughed. "I thought so. Because I want it, you won't give it. Oh well. I hated to have to do this but I'm going to play rough now. The rest of you lot—find the kid or none of you wake up again."

He added the last bit with the air of a parent tricking the children into doing their chores. The motley group looked dismayed. Then, as all children do, they turned on each other.

"Hey, look at the cushions on that one. She looks just right!" someone called out, and the blonde who was standing reluctantly in the corner with the tall, dark man gaped in surprise and offense. The man glared across the room.

It was going to turn really ugly soon.

"Come along. I think we both know who he is talking about," someone whispered in her ear, and before she could protest, he put his arm about her shoulder. Her heart beating nervously, she allowed him to lead her to the corner of the room where a door promised to be.

There was a helpless scream that made Luna feel guilty and then a crash as some thing was hurled through the air.

"Normally I wouldn't mind a little violence but I'm not about to let some freak in a clown suit take what's mine."

Riddle shook his head and pushed her through the door. They exited together.

* * *

Luna stayed a bit away from him as they journeyed the corridors. The stones were pearl-like. Teeth, she wondered briefly. She hoped not, but her attention, for better or for worse, was focused elsewhere.

"You're one of the violent ones, aren't you?" Luna blurted out, wondering why he had changed so suddenly. She certainly wasn't one.

She hoped…one could kill with kindness as well.

"…Some describe me as thus. But anyone can be violent," Riddle said, speaking in reeds. His voice was empty and full. "Case in point with the fools in the dining room earlier. I prefer subtle violence, myself. I take it, as we are the pair from our corner of the universe, that you, then, are one of the helpless, stupid ones?"

"I'm not stupid," Luna corrected him. "And I'm being helpless for two, so take it into account. By the way, how did you know I was the one? Everyone else didn't seem to notice."

"I imagine it's because we come from the same place, the same time, the same sphere. The others come from far different places. You might have noticed."

"I noticed you're helping me. I wouldn't have thought you would"

Riddle paused and considered her statement. "Can you guess why?"

"I think so, actually. Peter Pan is a bit of a….violent one, himself. You don't want him to come into your world, perhaps even into your own time. There can't be two violent ones, together, after all. They'd fight like fish."

He stopped and stared at her, for once truly taken back. "…You're not as dim as I thought."

"They'll be coming after us soon, you know."

"Pity. I had hoped they would all kill each other but I suppose I can't get that lucky. I picked this night to actually go to sleep, too."

There was a rather loud noise behind them, and they turned to look. Tentacles. Tentacles had apparently overrun the place. Some soul had tentacles and they were using them.

"It's the undercooked food," Luna accused. Riddle pulled her along by the hand, uninterested in the origin of such a thing. Or things as it was.

"Do you have your wand?" he asked, instead.

"Not in the bed with me," she replied. He rolled his eyes and produced his wand—through the palm of his left hand. It came through the skin in such a way she was sure it should have hurt. He didn't seem to mind at all. "Oh, that's a crafty place to put it. At arm's length at all times!"

"I find it useful when you just never know if you'll be running into strange people."

"Hmm," Luna said, nodding. "I can relate to that."

"Do you? I suppose there are so many mirrors in the world when you think on it," he asked with a false concern that didn't suit him, and she was instantly suspicious.

"There are people behind the mirrors, aren't there? I had a feeling that wasn't myself. Looked as if she _knew_ something."

"You-." He turned and walked quickly down the hall. She hurried along after him like a shadow. She expected something else to happen, and it wasn't long before it did.

A large…spiraled thing nearly met them head on when he turned the corner. She nearly pushed him down accidentally. Even though Tom pushed her backwards and drug her several paces with his left hand in her hair—very difficult to flee in such a condition!—she thought that was much lighter the pain than if she had actually knocked him down flat on his face.

In front of the…whatever it was. It was curly and spiraled and shiny-yet-understated yellow. It looked like a cross between a breakfast dessert and a snail. He didn't like dessert, Luna discovered, as he aimed his wand at it menacingly.

"I wouldn't do that," she warned. "It looks important."

"That, that gelatinous _blob_," he ground out, getting angry. '...lost its value when it got in _my way_."

"I think, since we are in a head, that _that _is a vital part. It seems harmless enough. If not slightly appetizing."

"Why don't you just devour it out of our way?" Snide McSnidely mocked but he stepped aside and they watched it ooze pass them. "You aren't large enough just yet. You must relate to it."

"Actually, I had a very large dinner."

"You're trying to make me ill, aren't you? You're intentionally being repulsive." He looked rather green. Well, the insult is a new one, coming from him.

"Discrimating even against pastries."

"I hate--," he began, and then shook his head. Instead of being even ruder, he hurried towards the opening of the place, a quaint, brown door. And instead of getting out, they almost stepped right back into the throe of things.

The Others were still fighting it out. The tentacles had lost their ground and there were now large, clicking, popping noises, and she was led to believe it might be a Mugglish weapon in the fray. Someone was hanging upside down from the ceiling like Mistletoe. By his toes. Full of arrows like a pincushion.

Tom quickly closed the door.

"I'm going to have to make a way out," he said to himself.

"We could but we could also try the other way." She wanted to participate.

"Clarify," he commanded.

"Goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe we are doing out which leads to in. But if we go in, then we can get out."

At his look, she continued, upping the ante. "There wasn't a brain to speak of. Did you see any trace of gray matter?"

"I think that particular problem is out here, not in there," he said, his voice carrying a lilt pointing right to condescension.

"Well, it's worth a try."

"…The idea, in this place, has a sliver of merit. It makes a very toxic sort of sense," Tom muttered and looked as if he meant it. She gave a little jump with her heels, in delight, and he flinched and glared.

"Let's give it a go."

She motioned back towards the door.

"Ladies first."

"Thank you," she said, believing his mood was improving a bit. She opened the door once more to find there was a cool tint of vastness in the air. A little bit of that, and this. She didn't see too much except an inky blackness and the reflection of a lake with a boat waiting on shore.

Luna stepped outside and made her way to the boat, studying it. It wasn't much to look at. It was quite small and looked oddly fragile. As if it was a toy boat for a child rather than anything sturdy and practical.

"Are you just going to stare at it stupidly? Still waiting for condiments?" he whispered, from right behind her. She sensed he was deeply stressed by this whole ordeal, and she didn't want to have her back turned to him. That just might be too tempting.

"You first, this time. It's only fair," she said, stepping aside quickly. He took her up on the offer, moving her aside—quite unnecessarily—and she secretly hoped he got a splinter. She was feeling the general…malaise of him and was wondering if she should try and find another boat for herself. He was, after all, a bully. Like half of those, at least, in the room behind her. She had never gotten along with bullies, either.

"Well? It's safe," he said almost pleasantly and she thought she had dreamed the tone up. "There are no surprises for us. Yet."

"I'm waiting for another one," she said, making a decision. "I'm relatively sure there's another one out there since it had a brand name, and it's nice just to be calm and wait for mass production to run its course."

"You won't last a minute," he said, speaking softly now. "You don't even have a wand."

"I think I can last longer than that. And I really am sure there are more boats. There are always more boats. I'm just positive."

"Are you really going to risk the child's life on your theory of relativity?"

She bit her lip nervously. Then conceded and walked heavy-footed towards him and the boat that looked barely floating.

"Good decision. There are always more boats but elsewhere. Not here. Not for you. Careful. This will be interesting."


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Still Applies

Chapter 4

She was so nervous that she felt like she had a stone in her stomach and it would weigh down the boat to the lakebed. Luna pictured it with child-like clarity in her mind's eye. Like a snap-shot.

Instantly, the boat tipped like a wonky scale and Luna was in the water. Riddle was on the other side of the boat, hanging in midair and yelling at her.

Why was she heavier than him? Was it a good sign or a bad sign/

Was the crocodile going to eat her heart now?

The crocodile Time. She distinctly heard a ticking noise all of the…in the Nile. Tom Riddle looked like…something more than ghastly through the bluish-black water. Some sort of god long lost. He judged.

But the crocodile eats the hearts around here. Tick, tick, and there was a shadow to her left, blossoming in ever-present angles, ripe in formation, while her hair floated around her like reeds and her eyes grew grey.

Her side of the boat bobbed up like an apple. She sputtered and wheezed.

Tom Riddle looked astounded. It was the first look ever in his history of looks. Just…baffled. Then he returned to normal and leaned forward, his jaw set and his eyes blazing in deep anger.

With him, anger came not from the mind, not from the heart (or lack wherever of), but from the soul.

"You want to get us both killed, don't you? He can't see your overweight lump and so you have to give him a visual aid. Blood in the water or not, it won't be mine."

'I…I couldn't help it. You have a way with words. The image just popped into my head."

He gripped the wand in his hand tightly, and he considered her, weighing the options.

"Will I have to fix it so nothing ever occurs to you again?"

She was very still and very cold. He was the crocodile, she thought.

"I can control it. I promise," Luna said, rubbing her arms.

"Do," he said and she gave a start when the boat began to glide forward. Luna would have been happy to be invisible and she tried to stay quiet. Only after several moments, he seemed to realize she was still alive. That bothered him, it seemed.

"So…someone has you for a mother?" Tom asked. "Tragic, the way life works for some poor souls."

"I know. I feel like I'm being eaten from the inside out. And there is _swelling_. I've heard of the rampant implantation scheme from the Ministry. Implant a spy, through the cauliflower growth, into the stomach to listen_ in. _I had no idea how deep it went._"_

Riddle seemed defiant for some reason. He straightened up and stared at her, taking his time studying her since he had the opportunity.

"You do know that happens, don't you?"

"I was told but I didn't expect to be an ompa-lumpa. I acquire mass with bread crumbs. I think there is multiplication going on, I-."

"Not that. The way that sometimes…well."

Luna stared. "Well what?"

"Some vampires…you know how cuckoo birds raise their young? Replace one child with another? That's very prominent with young women, with…swelling or whatnot. The infant grows teeth and decides it wants to be born. Takes it upon itself to make an exit and have a little snack on the way. A cake metaphor comes to mind.

All those sweet, expectant, little girls: walking rotisseries"

"…I have never heard of that," she whispered, all eyes.

"It's true. A very _bloody_ epidemic, last I read."

She began to shiver. He would have kept his ghastly grin if she hadn't started to scream. It was a bad moment, there, and for once, he actually had to be soothing.

"I...uh, I was just joking!" Tom called out nervously over her screams. "It was just a bit of conversation! Get your wits about you!"

Responding to the word wits, Luna calmed herself, realizing he had been being rude.

"Thank you for not ruining my robes. They are new," he said, and if to underline the point, he gathered the end of his robes to the far end of the boat. "Impressionable thing, aren't you? Scared of what's inside of you?"

"I'm more worried about the outside at the moment," she retorted, feeling pained from the earlier…horrible moment. "That was extremely rude."

"I'm sorry you believe everything you hear."

"That's not an apology," Luna muttered, holding her stomach.

"I'm sorry you misunderstand things on purpose so you don't have to face anything outside of your own control. You deflect things constantly, ignoring the normal, boring things like talking. Your only defense for an unreasonable world that misunderstands you. You like it, even though the result is that it makes you seem nearly mad. You build yourself in the contrary of what is the main flow of…well, everything, ironically, drowning yourself more in the flow," He spoke as if he knew her. His eye skipped the as if entirely, and he stared at her with a discerning familiarity. "But you're not mad at all. Your responses always relate, always connecting some way. Thus, you're extraordinarily normal."

At her look, he sighed. "You're not mad, you loony._ I_ can tell." This was stated with the air of a small awkward greediness, and his eyes flickered away from hers.

"I wouldn't know," she said primly. He made a motion with his rather admittedly beautiful hands that she assumed meant 'There you have it'.

Luna was inexplicably more afraid of him now than ever.

"Only that time, that little internalization of your discomfort almost got you killed." He smiled to himself. "Internally…oh, that's poetic. And I don't believe I would try that again, if I were you. Your coping mechanism won't work here."

"I don't think you know the first thing about me because you wouldn't care to. That's the key part, you don't really _care_. You can't know people without caring. You're flying blind with me, Tom."

"I don't see the problem with that if there's only one direction to go in," he said, and she felt a thrill of horror. "That much you also have in common with others. You think you're special. But don't take my _opinion _so personally. I don't think you lack…energy. It must be tiring, to keep up that particular defense all the time. I admire that. I'll give you one thing: you, like others, count in numbers. Only you go against the odds rather with them. At least you have made your choice. Everyone wants to be special but few want to pay the price."

He was brilliant, an artist with words. He linked them together in such a way that the link would feel far greater on her side than on his. Luna knew this. She also knew that he was really flying blind: he was an Outsider on the subject of being like people, of fitting in with anyone. Sometimes those outside the box know the workings of the inside better, or at least, present themselves that way. He had missed…quite a few things in his description. But she had felt nothing for years but anger and loneliness and a _longing_, a gift of his older self, and had basis of comparison.

_She felt deeply for him_. And an outsider would know she did this without any ill intent or conscious thought. She on the other hand had little awareness of this.

"You do know that when you wake it, it won't be over. If you have the child, it especially won't. I'm under the impression that it requires some interaction."

Life was/is/will be funny. Now that she could feel, there was another issue, another problem with the prospect of becoming…no, not becoming, being a mother.

"I don't want to do to…my child what my mother did to me." She was speaking more to herself than him but he perked up.

Tom Riddle belonged on a Muggle yacht. He would disagree, most fervently, but he belonged on a yellow yacht in the Caribbean drinking Gillywater or something of the like (something red, that kind of like). Because his posture just screamed elitist ponce. He was being condescending when he raised an inky black eyebrow and she knew it. She just thought it appealing.

Dreams. Weirder things have happened.

"And what, exactly, did your mother do to you, Luna? Leave stray bottles of potions about? Not childproof her wand? Leave you out in the sun too long one day?"

"She died on me. Actually."

His eyes searched hers and you know, she thought he was trying to spy a lie. He seemed more interested now.

"Pity she couldn't find a convenient day to die," he answered. Yet he was still listening.

"It's not just that, either. Um, it's different when you have someone counting on you for feeding, of course, I'm not discounting that." Riddle made a face at her. Luna ignored him. "It's that I look at myself through my mother's eyes. My mother was brilliant. She researched the forbidden arts without funding and still managed to find the most astounding things. She was amazing.

And there's me. I went to Hogwarts, hoping…that I would be as liked as she had been, grow up to be as pretty as she had been. I'd never say to anyone outside of this place, outside of my dreams, but I'd have liked to have been acknowledged. In some way. In a class or as a good friend or…some little way.

I didn't mind sitting outside alone for my own self. I rather liked it. I could concentrate and see the beautiful clouds and maybe because I was looking at life in little pieces rather than the big, two dimensional, boring picture, that I was special in some way. That I was at peace with what I could do, and what I could do was dream.

But through my mother's eyes, all I could see was disappointment. I kept saying to myself once I am out of school, I will travel the world and do great things and discover. Change the way people think about things, for good, and perhaps find the beauty I was good at seeing in clouds.

I wanted to find meaning. In myself, mostly, but in the world. I missed the awe I felt from the beginning, before Hogwarts. I struggled very hard to keep it.

For many reasons—a specific one, but for many, I can't fool myself now—I found out that school wasn't the reason for my failure. I was the reason. I used to be content looking forward to the next day. Never in the one I was in. I was dreaming of the next day or the little things. And one day, I woke up pregnant and my time was up.

And do you know, my mother…I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry that she had me instead of the charming, talented girl that she deserved.

I feel sorry for mothers in general. I don't know if she would have loved me. I feel wicked for saying it, I do, but perhaps we were both lucky that she died. I do not know."

Riddle was silent for a moment, looking at his hands. Luna didn't know where all that had come from. She hadn't gone through her days—even up to before the incident with Voldemort—actively thinking such things. It must have been the lack of feeling for all those years.

And of course, she confided to the worst of confidants.

Life will always be funny, complex in its simplicity. She was just rather tired of being out of the joke.

"I, too, believe that love is not always…well, I believe it's not there at all. But in your example, yes, that affection due to blood and pain is not guaranteed."

Luna paused. "Really? Or are you just being…"

He looked up, with a darkened gaze.

"Really." Luna finished, the adjective she was looking for not being of use.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Still Applies

Chapter 5

"Yes. I'll admit I've wondered what that woman would have thought of me. From time to time...briefly," he said.

"It's impossible not to. I'm sure she's proud to have someone who is so clever, with so much endurance and determination." Everyone has some nice things about themselves. He looked put-off but did not dismiss her claim.

"It's as they say. To be a man, you must kill your father. Not literally," he added at Luna's look. Oh. So he must not have…taken that step yet. "Or one's mother. Attachments hold you down. I disagree, though, with your statement about it being impossible. Cut the attachment, cut the cultural pressure on ridiculous, puerile feelings. That will free you from such _impossible _thoughts."

Luna knew firsthand that Tom was correct. That was the hell of it. He was right. She didn't know which she preferred…her sight was back but she was staring right down into the gutter now. Pain and fear and constant doubt…

"We supposedly all need each other. I tell you that it is possible to better yourself without owing your success, your _person_, to another. A homage to an image of someone else…I reject that destiny. It can be done. As for acknowledgment, well, you just have to make them acknowledge you as apart from them, better than them. If it pleases you. It's hardly necessary, ideally. What is necessary…is to create a world where you make yourself necessary. I plan to do just that."

She didn't know what to say. She was at a stand-still. First off, whatever she could say obviously didn't work. Hindsight and all that. She was already doomed.

"I don't want you to assume-," he continued, switching back to charm and youth, pulling back the cobra's hood. "—that I endorse, support violence. It's just the world is far less than perfect. I plan to make it a much more worthwhile place and bring back all the old ways."

"And if they don't acknowledge you?"

Riddle tilted his head back, as if his thoughts were too heavy for even himself.

"Well, if they don't. I don't imagine they'll be better than me if they are six-feet under. No?"

"Then you let them win. If you take their life over that."

"Oh, there will be other reasons," Riddle said, smiling thinly, but he had mentally dismissed her now. "I do unto others as they do unto me. Only worse."

"I understand. Well…I can see the general direction where you are coming from."

"Of course. We are both in this place. According to that twit in tights, at least."

"Another thing with that—I feel silly. But I didn't like be told that there were others like me. You know, like-like me. Did that bother you any?"

"At first…it infuriated me. Then I looked around and got my wits about me. None of those people will ever be close to what I am becoming and will be. They can't hold a candle to me.

I'm not even going to acknowledge any of that insignificant nonsense."

"Then I won't either. I wanted your opinion."

Only she imagined his fellows would have said the same thing in a different way.

Tom seemed to calm down after a bit, looking around at the dark water with vague interest.

"…Have you thought about following your own advice and going to a nice place, an island somewhere, to meditate?" Luna offered. Riddle clenched his jaw.

"It's just a suggestion. I mean, people might get distracted by the six-feet under…facet of it all instead of the more interesting things."

"Yes, because being so socially astute, you'd know what people would think, how they'd react. Everything. How could I not see that?"

"It's not that I dislike people liking others. I think showing feeling is good and sundry if one is not a slave to them. I would say not to shut others out but then again, I'm not doing much better."

"…You are not to be compared to me. Ever," Tom said. The look in his eyes was cold and somewhat murderous. Oh dear.

"You are right, there. I'm sorry, my words rather went on without me."

The tension passed, though she was still a little frightened by him. It was a dream, though. How could she get hurt, truly?

"At any rate, what are we going to do about Pan?"

"…I'll take care of that problem when it arrives. I'm choosing my battles, Luna."

Oh, but he was too much of a Pan himself to be objective. Luna resolved to set her own mind to the problem as well. They spent the rest of the ambiguous time in silence but it wasn't as oppressive as it was earlier. Luna no longer felt as if she was suffocating to death with a huge rock on her chest.

Then the boat skidded with a huge hissing sound that made one's teeth grind, and black snow flew by the sides in a storm. The lake had frozen solid. They looked at one another.

"I suppose that means we're walking," Tom said and got out of the boat carefully, testing his weight on the ice. Luna sighed, depressed at the prospect of a stroll and thought back to the nice room she had originally been in.

It occurred to her that all the male fellows were fully dressed. The girls on the other hand were all in their nightwear. How could that situation possibly go wrong? Luna was thankful that she had dropped her habit of sleeping in the natural state and bowing to convention.

Oh, thank her lucky stars. She smiled and stepped out of the boat daintily, toes first.

"Don't be such a woman," Tom said. Luna was properly bewildered.

"What else am I supposed to be?"

"An alien, I imagine, I'm just trying to keep the suspicion to myself. I didn't mention it before because I am old-fashioned, like that." His eyes said old-fashioned brutality, but she wasn't to bend.

"I'm just as British as you are, sir."

He pursed his lips. "You know, I'm now of the opinion there should be more stringent deportation laws."

Prig, she thought. "I agree. Terrorize those on the moon, yell where there's no sound."

"You mean, yourself."

Luna had other worries. Deeper worries: not as deep as the dark world below her small slippers. Slippers. Of all things.

"I'm not sure this ice will hold us. I do hope the implantation can be used as a floatation device. We may need it." She held her hand to her lips in that deep worry.

"I'd as soon as drown in the abyss." Anything he said could be dipped in ink, to make it last. As long as it wasn't written in the rain. Which was the problem. He was always a storm or two behind.

"That's funny," she commented, looking up at him, her eyes full of thought.

"I'm glad it amuses you."

"I'm glad I'm not alone in this," she said, walking close.

"You're never alone, apparently," he said, motioning to her stomach.

"I meant-."

"I'm aware of what you meant." That was as far as he would comment. She kept her stride and felt oddly comforted by the fact that she wasn't dead yet. He had a history of killing people he didn't care for…they had to make extra graveyards for him.

"This experience brings so much thought, you know. I mean, Peter Pan, a brain-child. That's why we appeared in the cranium. I wonder if we are all figments of imaginations."

"You know what I find strange. Is that of all things for a sick girl to imagine, she imagines _that_."

Luna smiled. "I think she lost her concentration, somewhere among the creation. It was…rather bad, wasn't it?"

"I wonder if he has the same insides as others. Think of it, she wasn't aware ah, fully of human anatomy."

This was going into territory that was questionable. Luna loved it.

"Ah, you plan to find out."

"I do. I admit to curiosity. What is he running on, anyway? Just a soul, a memory…I've read of a similar concept. But there's a lack of blood price in this situation that is odd."

"Oh, there might have been some blood…"

Riddle stared. "Oh, the girl turned cannibal on her family in her delirium, eh. Wanted to take her religion to a new level."

The allusion was lost on Luna but she had an idea of her own.

"Ah, if she did such a thing, she just wanted not to be so alone anymore."

Tom Riddle had a glimmer of recognition, to the truth behind the untrue in her words. They were both…not remorseful, especially him. They had just been there before, with this story. It wasn't theirs but it was their only one they could tell.

Well…something else, too," Luna added, looking at her stained slippers shyly, thinking they were too close. "I don't wish to go into the details but…you know…"

A blank look, rare from him. "Don't be such a woman," Luna said, hinting.

"Oh for…that, I did not…well, it makes sense," he said, frowning. "It's not exactly right but…

I get it."

He stopped in his tracks and Luna looked at him, puzzled.

"Wendy wasn't just his creator in the realm of the mind. She was his literal creator. A miscarriage during a fever. Think of it. That is the answer, I'm sure of it."

In her soul, she knew it to be true. "Or…deliberate, do you imagine?"

"It's more than likely," Tom said. "Well, that's grim and properly shameful." He seemed happy about it.

"It may be worse."

"How so?"

"Well, the story goes that Wendy had a very conflicted relationship with her father."

To her surprise, Tom put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. He proceeded to illustration the pros and cons of the situation with his hands. He was very much a hand-talker, bless him.

"Let's leave that one to the sorting hat. It's uh, unnecessary to follow that line of thought. Though, to really think it through that would be why the baby could never be allowed to take a breath. We are on to something. Suppose he's vulnerable to certain emotional manipulations; he should be. He has never grown up to deal with the reality like we have, like all of us have. We should be more than a match for the little bastard."

Unnecessary language, she thought.

"Or it's precisely _that _that is our weakness. I daydreamed a lot. You keep your ambitions lofty. A great deal of us are not in…well, the realm of everyday reality. We may fall prey to the fantasies of this land."

"You might, yes. Keep your head clear, at least. Try to be something other than a burden."

In her opinion, she had. However, she wouldn't press him.

'I will try. What do you think happened to our fellows?"

"Myself, I'm staying with the killing-each-other option. Other than that, they are wandering this poor excuse for a world too. It's too much like the cat in the box question. Dead and alive at the same time. You notice that it is getting colder?"

Yes, Luna had, and yes, Luna did. The numbness in her hand, the chill in the air, the way her breath fogged up.

Yes, she had noticed. Perhaps that is why the lake froze.

"It's because we are beginning to die."

She blinked and looked up at him, something inside of her withering.

"Our bodies are growing colder in this kind of sleep. Who knows, we may have been in a coma for weeks in real time."

"I can't be in a coma," she whispered. "I have a child, the child he wants!"

"I'm sure the child is being kept alive by medi-witches. An emergency birth with the mother tragically lost. Just want the Healer ordered, isn't it?"

"That can't be."

"You think I like it any better?" his eyes flashed, something red and hateful underneath his icy, spookily calm demeanor. He was about to become violent, she was sure, the longer that they remained in this place. "My body, helpless somewhere. I am not in any reachable place when this disaster happened. You think I like that, that I'm…"

"…No. Then we have to hurry, don't we?"

"Look under your feet," he said, and Luna, fool she was, actually looked. Faces in the water…

"That is certainly one place to keep the spares," he continued, elsewhere in his head.

"In dreaming, we are the closest to death," she muttered. No wonder he had kept her with him. He didn't want to be alone. Despite his earlier praise of isolation, in this case, he hadn't wanted to be alone. It made her sad.

"Do you care about the life of your child at all, Luna?" he asked, and it was in regards to something else.

"…I know what I came across like. But truth is, I care perhaps too much. I won't let him die inside of me."

"Then let's go to that shore. It's the place he's been leading us."

Luna spied the shore and saw that the trees were ink blots and spider-webs. These trees were sycamores, dying eternally. In between them darted shadows.

Without speaking, Luna and Tom grew closer to the shore, and without saying, the shadows were the lost boys.

She could see from this distance that they were caught in-between development. They were in the process of being born and dying every moment. It must have been difficult. Their eyes were dark, without irises, and they gazed back.

"Lost boys," she confirmed for Tom.

"Unborn boys," he said back. "Just like Pan."

At that moment, Luna felt foolish. For disliking her life as much as she had and seeing those who had never seen the sky. They truly have never seen color; literally never felt touch unless they felt the indifferent touch of the Healer taking them out of the mother, a last glimpse of what could have been.

They would be cruel and violent against those unlike them, those un-baptized by their misery. Already, they were throwing stones, not gauging them correctly.

"Have mercy on them, Tom," Luna said, clutching at her robes. Hating this place more and more.

"Like they would have mercy on us. All due respect to those who do not respect you one little bit." But to her surprise, he merely created a shield ward. The stones bounced off harmlessly, and the Lost Ones bared their teeth and touched the dark trees with sticky, red hands.

They backed away, spurned. She was sorry.

"I wonder if they can move on."

"Never, remember. They're just dumb beasts now," Tom said, more accepting than she, more open than she. They watched. "They weren't going to survive in the world, anyway."

He was so accepting he didn't want to go further on the land. He slowed his pace and looked around at those dead things. He didn't show a drop of fear. She knew he was terrified.

"No, they weren't," she said. "I think that…that if you look ahead at that too long, you'll forget how to go forward. So let's not look."

"Kind of difficult."

"If we get to the center, we can go on. He's young. He'll hide the end in plain sight, right in the middle."

He adjusted the sleeves of his dark-green robe, buying time.

"I'm with you, you know. All the way," she said, trying to be cheerful. This wasn't her idea of a good time, seeing death in this light. Her mother may be somewhere among the weeds of this place, with no peace but the emptiness and mud of those just like her. This wasn't what was promised to her. "This is our land as much as it is Pan's."

"I blame this part on you."

"Oh." He did walk forward, slowly, but forward, still adjusting his sleeve, making it perfect. Take forever. "That's all right. It is, too. I'm not just waiting for you out of fear. I'm waiting because I feel we are in this together."


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Still Applies

Chapter 6

He rolled his eyes and made it up the shore, with no words in exchange, but Luna felt lighter.

"Strange, that we should be together from our corner of the world."

"Corner? Make us sound like a doorstop, why don't you, or a place for prostitutes and whores."

"…Well."

He frowned. "Well what?"

"I feel your negative energy in waves. You know, this is an interesting experience. I wonder what we can take from it."

"That's what I've been considering this entire time. Pan never died."

"And he's always dying, apparently. He wants to be us."

"Me, maybe."

"All right, then, you. You're right, I agree with that."

"What do you do? What's your occupation? I suddenly must know where not to go."

"…Oh, at little of this, a little of that. I like everything. I don't just want to do one thing."

He shook his head. "So you are an expert at dabbling. No mastery of a subject?"

"I'm a writer. I take pictures and I categorize animals of all sorts. I've traveled a lot! I like to travel. Everyone seeing the same clouds and sky all over the world. Just amazing, just fantastic."

She had the brief idea that he was trying to be impressive while making her the fool. She wonder how she did look to him. Then it just happened.

Her vision turned multiplied. She saw herself from every angle, and as a result, stumbled and fell, her limbs at every angle.

He was having the same difficulty and glimpsed him—rather heard him—tumbling into a spiky bush.

It occurred to her, then, what had happened. Her finky thoughts.

"That's because we see ourselves through other's eyes," she muttered, shaking her head from the kaleidoscope vision. It was as if she were a spider, watching a thousand, miniature television scenes, her mind being disintegrated from the sensory overload.

Luna wandered in his general direction.

"Think of things you like, the very first thing. Something introspective," she called. "Something you care for, just for yourself."

Her vision was slowly but surely turning back to clear sight. The buzzing in her head was smoothing out as the bees went elsewhere for their honey. Tom still had trouble, still rattling around in the bushes. She was cautious going near him in this state but it was necessary and he seemed to be in pain.

Luna located him leaning against a gnarled sycamore. "Tom…" He had his face buried in his hands and she wasn't sure he could hear her.

She waited by him for perhaps a week.

It may have been several in real time but here, she was sure it was just a week. He got out of it slowly, in pieces and the sides were muddy and it was easy to slip and fall, but he did it. She didn't show anything else with emotion. Just simple things.

"There's something more to this," he said, resting against the same tree. "That was almost an illusion. It wasn't collective enough but only just."

"This makes me think that to get in our heads so well without a vocal spell means there's other pieces to this picture."

"Smaller things. Moving like a hive. As an unit, as one."

"Precisely," Luna said, surprised. Same answer, different approaches. Like a circle of sorts.

"I've been thinking the same. It doesn't sense its pain in those smaller units. They are just replaced instantly before a wound can take its toll. What do you suppose they are?"

"Bugs, possibly. If Pan is just a lost part of the body, at that point…bacteria? Kells?"

"Cells, you mean," he answered. "I think if we find the connection, we can make it oh so more effective."

"So it feels the pain. Huh. Well, a little pain would be a good thing at this point. Pan hasn't felt pain so he has no concept of joy. One can't exist without the other."

"Besides, builds character," Tom smiled. Darkly. "Maybe it's not pain. Maybe its fear the wretch needs. He thinks he's a god. A rejected limb who wants to rule the world…"

"Just as long as it isn't excessive. It might be more effective if it were a…in the other's shoes type of thing."

"When he's dead, I'll try and remember to try on his shoes. Only the heathen wasn't wearing any shoes, was he? No sole, no sole at all."

Luna couldn't help but be pleased at his leap in connection. She did try and help it. She let out a little gasp of happiness. He seemed to sense her weakness and smiled charmingly. And when Tom really wanted to be charming, he went further than that. He was almost-not quite-angelic. Even though he was a snake, she wanted to squish him. In that non-fatal kind of way.

"You should be Orpheus and charm all these little ones to peace," she opined, clasping her hands together.

"To pieces, more like," he said, distinct even in dreams. He talked with more than his hands, his artist's hands. He talked with his body. He was everything you wanted to be. The only thing was she didn't want to be anything.

They were a good match.

"My mood is poor, anyway," he finished. "Make haste, would you?"

"We should be making paste," she replied with a shrug. "Something to keep all the pieces of him together for a good trouncing. When I think of that, however, I think of sluggish molasses. When I think of that, I think of slow k…cells. Which is what we are in."

"…What if the pieces were faster?" Riddle proposed, the look of an idea written in the air around his handsome face.

"If it were hotter. With more Sol."

"The faster they move, the higher the frequency of contact. Wait here, I have something in mind for that."

Luna watched him disappear through the trees to make a day, his figure reminding her of a grandfather clock, for some reason, ticking to the end. No mice running along his spine. He certainly wasn't a coward. Of the bad sort, certainly, but he didn't lack bravery.

When he was out of sight, she realized the height of the trees and the heaviness of the silence and how alone she was and how ill-equipped she was. Her life was not her own and to not be able to defend it as she used to was more of a burden that it was almost worth. She placed her hands on her stomach and waited for him to return.

It seemed like years but for an instant, the dark sky turned red. Sparks came from each corner, or from the same corner, and it was ironic, really, that he chose to set his mark on fire. It worked, better than any other sun as far as she was concerned.

The red light made the trees cast shadows on the ground, oblong shadows. She watched the tree's shadows. She did not watch her own.

That's the one you are always supposed to watch.

Hers desired attention, and it darted past her feet, dancing back and forth. Violent, and she jumped as if it _was _a mouse.

"Put me in my place again and I'll kill you," the shadow spat at her, eyes dark and luminous, from under the bush, and rushed, fluttered, jumped behind the tree.

"Stop telling me I'm loony, stop telling me I'm wrong, stop telling me I can't be here,"

Flicker from tree to tree, 'won't accept me, so I won't accept you', dance to dance. 'Reject you before you can hu-hu-rt me'

"LET ME BE," it spoke in her face in a blink but screamed, and pulled on the branch, the limb, and Luna's heart sank like a stone as the tree screamed in pain. It brought tears to her eyes and she covered her ears to try and block it out.

"I can't, you're a part of me," Luna said, trying to reason but fearing her own words. No choice, to be with what you are. She backed away, feeling small.

The shadow was on the ground, now, in slivers enjoying the pain of itself and others, and crawled towards her. "Perhaps, I will feel better, be better, if I eat you alive."

It said. Lovingly. Then it was real and had fingernails and was dragging her into the dark.

Not live here, will be better than here, lost in one's head, lost in one's heart.

_Abandon the world as it has abandoned you. _

Suddenly, there was a flash of light and the thing shivered away, falling back and eventually out of sight.

Riddle stood behind her, wand raised cautiously. For once, he stared warily at her.

"…I think it's gone. I think you've run it off," Luna stammered, getting to her feet.

"…No. It's just gone back where it came from in the first place." He gazed at her, fascinated. It wasn't quite hatred. It was a look of understanding, and when one has to see themselves, it can be close to hatred.

Luna felt like stone.

"Oh…back in the trees…"

And he let her lie for once. She was glad for it, grateful for it. She had nothing else to say.

"Can you walk?" he asked, and she nodded. They walked further, and she saw he had no shadow to speak of. It made him feel worlds away. Unlife, and oh, she knew his life and what happened to him.

She thought about the unnatural angles of his body, lying there, and she was walking besides him with his death in mind. It seemed so suddenly horrible she felt a pang in her heart. She did feel like she understood him, just a little. Just a small bit. What could she do to help him?


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Still Applies

Chapter 7

"Listen. Do you hear that?" Tom asked, putting an arm out to stop her. She stopped thinking and started to listen, and he was right. There was a sound in the middle of the sycamores. There was a weaving, hissing sound.

"Shrouds on the ground?" she offered.

"Always a little ray of sunshine…Yes. It seems we've sped things up nicely. They might not like the light.

We have the upper-hand."

"We might have the hand, but what if we use it, only to get cuffed?"

"…And I'm the negative one," he muttered, looking at the trees and the figures that were moving faster and faster, their hair covering their faces. Thankfully. She noticed his knuckles were pale-white and she thought she saw a bead of red on his palm. He was squeezing his hands much too tightly.

"I think they aren't for us, they go around in circles. They are just going a little faster."

"I think we've ended them. They are aging…"

She looked again and saw again, that he was right. Their hair was growing, down to their feet.

"Well, they will have a grave to rest in when they are through," she said, referring to the furrows in the ground that all the motion was making. He gave her a smile of approval.

"That's practical," he said, nodding and looking handsome. Then they hit the wall of webs, and his good mood went out the window to fall several floors. "WHAT ELSE?! WHAT ELSE CAN HE INSULT ME WITH?!"

"With women's clothing," she offered, remembering the stories of Snape. That helped nothing. Tom turned red and started to create an amazing amount of destruction. Creating destruction was his oxymoron specialty, and no one was quite like him in his artistic way of making it matter.

"Well, he certainly knows where we are now," she pointed out. If the entire world hadn't gotten a glimpse of Tom's rage in their dreams, then, she'd eat the Sorting Hat. He tore through the webs, hacking at them with every dark spell he could remember.

Luna observed the destruction at a safe distance. "I think you got them all."

He seemed to feel a bit excessive at that point and stopped, panting and wiping his forehead. "But what made the web is still nearby."

"It all leads to the web. It's what brought us here."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because it was the ceiling to this place. The angles in the cranium match the angles of the web design almost exactly."

Tom examined the loose bits of webbing remaining, and a spark of recognition and understanding flashed in his eyes. He had one big trick under his sleeve, she could tell.

"Remarkable observation, Luna." And he was off, marching in the direction of the center, removing everything in his path. She was rather awed as he seemed a force unto himself. She admired such forces in nature, after all. She followed. They seemed to be going down, like the earth was a great cone and they were reaching the tip of the anti-top.

They reached the place of center and it was a spiral.

"It resembles a storm," she muttered, awed.

"No. No, missed that one, dear. It resembles an umbilical cord."

Luna stared around, her eyes wide, and she moved closer to him, in the shadows. They were Under. She sensed it in the heaviest of the air. The sky was in fragments above them, and things were fragile and complex. The web was thickest here, and there was a tremble of a note.

They both listened hard, and it seemed that the women appeared out of whispers. Three women, their hair down up in spiral corners. Spirals in finger tips, spirals in ears. They were everywhere, they were nature, they were the Pull.

The trio was doing just that—pulling red threads from a nest, a mess, and aligning them on the web in micro details. A life in a dot. The web was the reflection, and it stretched for those unreal as well as real, as choices bow to nature. As independence lies in the direction of an invisible switch. The air is not free: space won't have it.

She jumped as the women lifted their heads in unison, as one. Their eyes were rich and cold like the Fall.

"Visitors," one, the youngest said.

"What do."

".you seek."

She had no clue. "Uh," she began, placing a fingertip to her lips.

"Don't you say a word," Tom said, nudging her.

"Silence, then," one said, smiling, and their bodies were all angles.

"Odd," he said, breaking the silence like a raider in a temple would break the statue. "This is the wrong place for things no one believes in."

"You don't."

".Believe."

".In feat."

".In fact."

'.In fate."

"It's what luckless people cling to. It's the path of the least resistance. You might as well be debris and flotsam floating in a river. Oh well, rubbish begets rubbish."

"He says."

"Sisters, that he-."

"Oh, he, of all--."

".People."

"But that's-."

"Every person."

Luna got the joke: it counted only when it concerned oneself. Like dreaming. Like life. So close, these dots, but they connect off glances, and the whole of life is seen through a tunnel. Life was lonely, and in her heart, she still feels the ashes of her hate.

"Have you cut the—"

"Artery with your--."

".Blood in it."

Tom was quiet, in control, but his lip twitched.

"We'll come for you then," they said as one. "Thoughts like arrows will then become like ghosts."

Madness, they were saying. She was mad on his behalf, as a matter of fact. No one messes with thoughts like that! "I don't believe in you either. And the teacher of your subject is a bit of a joke, everyone knows so."

"It might be-

"A bit more of a le-

"sson, legion, lesions,"

"Learned with a bit-

"of pain."

Then they drew close. "What are they doing, Tom?"

"Uh…" he said, raising an eyebrow.

"Merging," Luna said, answering her own question. "Good," he replied, sounding relieved. She didn't quite know how he was relieved, when their limbs turned into multiples of eight, of infinity, and their angled smiles gave way to fangs, a demon in a Cheshire cat suit. They had a red hourglass on their back. A spider.

"Such a poor choice before me. Before me, of all people," he gloated, spreading his arms and _smiling._ Luna was properly lost and moved to the side, preferably behind the nearest tree. "Knowing so much and knowing so little. You only know a certain way to go, like the feeble clay pawns of Muggle imagination. You lack my instinct, and-."

It hurried toward him and almost bowled him over in mid-boast. She was sure it has squished him in the fatal way before he scrambled out from under it.

"Carriage before the Threstral, Tom," Luna called out from behind her tree. Then he started to get serious—or so she hoped—and went for their many legs. He cut them all in one wave and the spider rolled…

But the spider wasn't Fate. She looked at the eight in the web, the hunger of the gleam, and knew that was the place of power. The spider was up in an instant, with more legs for the road, and attacked him again. He deflected it easily but he would tire, eventually.

Luna had an idea. "Tom!" she called.

"Shut up!" he said back. They were friends now, she imagined. Only a friend would tell a friend to shut up.

"The web! You should give the images free-will. Put a portrait spell on them!"

He made a face, and she wondered at the look. Then. "I don't know that spell."

"How come?" she asked. He ran backwards a few steps and sliced the fangs of the spider neatly. He hissed, and it drew up, flailing, and Tom darted underneath it, as nimble as a cat. He cursed it and the thing howled.

It seemed as though something was inside the spider now, withering under the skin. He smiled and then remembered her question.

"I don't believe in the idea of mere pictures remaining behind," he yelled, out of breath. "I don't need it! I refuse to know that crutch!"

She pointed, and he dodged the spider's return. "Just a polarity reversal. Spiders eat their young. This time, the young can feast on the spider."

Luna shuddered. It wouldn't work, though. She just knew it. "Well, the spider might want to know the spell. Spiritio infinitam."

Riddle threw up his hands and made a rude gesture in her general direction. She was thrilled! They were friends.

The battle seemed to go on forever, and Luna noticed with a frown that Tom seemed determined not to use the spell. He panted and cursed and hexed and killed a few times over but he refrained from that spell. She waited and glared at him as hard as she could.

When he finally cast the spell, Luna jumped for joy and yelled out happily. A little loudly. The spider turned in her direction, but the spell had worked. The dots were pouring and pulling every which way! The web was gone in a blink of the eye and Tom cast the Killing Curse one last time.

Its mouth opened and thousands of tiny spider poured towards her like the Red Sea, fully ready to quench her life. She froze, panicked.

Tom murmured something under his breath without hesitation, and the red hourglasses on their backs turned over. They flooded back to the mother and died with her.

Something about the flow of time, she was sure. Moreover, she wouldn't have thought of it in a million Evers.

"You are very, very clever!" Luna said, running up to him, and so lost was she in the general joy de vivre, that she touched his arm in goodwill. Tom was taken back by her happiness that he was still alive—though technically speaking—and he flinched. She remembered herself and retreated, but still held his gaze, smiling warmly. "Everything you did was just perfect. Imagine, you defeated what some would consider the most powerful of gods."

"Clay birds, was all they were. People do have a tendency to breathe life into the most common place things, and lose their own in the process."

"Life must not be worth every Knut, then. Life tends to go when it is needed the most.' She had no idea she was speaking ill of a dear friend but then again, life was funny.

"Your…idea was…adequate," he replied slowly, his expression resembling someone who was savoring a lemon, and he cuffed her on the shoulder. It rather hurt.

"Really!" Luna beamed and clasped her hands some more, wringing them in delight.

"Really," Tom said, looking amused.

"I don't think I would have done as well, though, with the wand work."

He tended to think so himself and smiled; for the context, it was a real smile. For the context, Luna remembered who also thought they were very clever and it dampened her spirits considerably.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: Still Applies

Chapter 8

"You've never felt a baby kick before, have you?" Luna asked casually, tilting her head.

"No," Tom said, looking wary. He had made a pretty blue-flamed fire for them to sit by, and she was comfortable.

"Well, he's kicking now. Would you like to feel before he gets tired?" She motioned to her stomach. She believed he considered it and gathered the end of the nightgown with her hands.

"I'll pass." She was disappointed and slumped.

"Who is the father?" Tom pried, the thought in his mind, most likely wondering if it was a last name of prestige. He squinted at Luna's rather round stomach, as if searching for a clue. "What does he do?"

"Do?" Luna asked, stalling.

"What's his position? His job. His work. Skill, if any."

"Oh, well. You might have heard of his father. His father wrote Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them," she said, nodding and bobbing her head, and in actuality, she was proud of this fact.

"I remember that book. The organization of that book was atrocious. Written, in some ways, from a Muggle perspective. The magical natural world written with the view from the gutter. I hope you didn't marry the son for his writing ability."

"I think the book was lovely and organized very professionally."

"And your maiden name?" Pry, pry, pry.

"Lovegood."

"…I've heard of that family." He gazed off the fire, as if confirming something. "That…explains a lot. I suspect, with that combination of blood, the child will certainly be...known. He's not starting on the ground with the rest of us. He's under the bloody sea level. Poor, pitiful fool."

"All right," Luna said. "I happen to disagree, but you know, there are worst places to start."

"Yes. From the center of the earth. Not quite _that _pitiful."

"I prefer that!" she said, amazed. "Then, he could just go anywhere around the world. Ah, that's nice.'

He chuckled. Just a little bit, or so she thought. "So, it's just Luna and a so-and-so against the world. I like those odds."

"His name is-." That's when she really stepped in it. Because at the moment, she had no clue what her husband's first name was, is, has been, will be. It felt kind of silly and awkward as she had been sharing the bed for a bit. Riddle caught on and then truly did burst out laughing.

"Ah, true love. The strongest bond in the world. I guess names don't matter, then." He got up and decided to relocate around the fire, just to see her humiliation all the better.

"It begins with an R."

"Ralph, Rupert, Roger, Roldophus…Rudolph."

"Close!"

Tom looked at the sky intently, and she had the feeling he was too amused to stay serious. "Rudolph… may have something to light his way in the bedroom, especially when going south." He kept his mouth hidden behind his hand, in the mockery of thought.

"No need. The sheets are glow-in-the-dark," Luna said vaguely, trying to think of the name. He turned completely away from her and seemed to be undergoing some fatigue again with his shoulders shaking. Poor Tom.

She thought and thought. "Ah-hah! It's Rolf."

"Because that's so much better. How do you keep up with him, without knowing the man's name? That's odd. You must know that's odd. It's just basic human intelligence to know a person's given name, even if you regard them less than…worthy of a name. He's a sperm-donor to you?"

Well, goodness. "No, no, no. He's a very nice, good man. He's given me everything he could. He never held back."

His mouth twitched. Luna was of the opinion he should calm down, but he was younger than her in this time.

"I can tell he left a lasting impression."

"I do know him, I just wasn't myself for all these years. I cheated him."

Riddle looked intrigued, raising an eyebrow. "How ever did Ms. Scamander manage to do such a subtle thing?"

Luna smiled sadly. "I said it already. I was not myself. I'm sure you can understand."

He grew quiet, still intrigued. She explained.

"I don't have anything to offer him," she said, truthful and watchful. He was watching her, too intently, and she directed her look to the flames. "I think I married him because I have nothing to offer—no true feeling of love, you know. At that time in my life, after so much. No ability for it, no taste for it—so he wouldn't expect anything and be disappointed with me."

"You're not supposed to offer him anything, Luna. You're a woman."

"Oh!" she said. "That's a bit chauvinistic."

He laughed. "Old-fashioned. Sounds to me that he married you because you believe you don't have anything to offer. Anyone can tell. In fact, if you could feel, you'd wonder why anyone would want you."

"If I could…" she trailed off.

"Women should be treated…"

"Like a prize," she griped.

"Like a treasure," he answered, running a finger down her arm. She remembered her earlier actions: the problem with riddles are that they always come full circle.

"I'm not, and please, no flowers." Luna remembered that story of him too. Riddle comin' a courting was as good as death wooing you. Especially if he brought flowers for the grave.

"I won't. Beautiful gifts don't seem to fit," he answered. She winced. "But as far as women go, you aren't what anyone would want at first sight. Then you do have aspects that are surprising. You are deeper than you appear. Normal gifts would be demeaning. I'm of the opinion that you deserve better than the best."

Luna said nothing because this, this was terrifying. Her heart sputtered around and she found the fire the most fascinating thing in the world.

"At first sight, no. Absolutely not. But upon reflection, why not? It's that case. I think you more tolerable than most girls. I wouldn't have gotten…far at all with any other. In fact, I might have had to take care of them myself, to avoid the trouble."

"…Thanks for not taking care of me, Tom. I do appreciate it."

"Don't bother, it's _nothing_. Now about your lack of feelings…that interests me. I'm the same." He leaned against the log and didn't mind telling this. It was the first time he had told anyone.

"You seem to have plenty," she answered, remembering him in life.

"I seem to. _Seem._ But there are few things that satisfy me, there are few things that give me…joy is the word I'm looking for, there. I believe. I feel everything and nothing. Like this love you were talking about lacking…I'll never understand it. To me, it's just…seeming. That's all there is."

"Maybe you could understand it here."

"Never, remember."

"No, that's precisely why," Luna answered. "What is never in real life is ever in Never-Never-Land. In my opinion."

He paused, looking up through his eyelashes, perturbed. To say the least. It was true, and now he was afraid. She hated her way with people. Everyone always became uncomfortable.

"That's…interesting."

"Would you like…to try? I can try and remember what it was like when I loved."

"I've…well, I've got nothing to offer in exchange. And it's just...I don't think I'd like it."

"Really?"

"It'd be hell for me," he answered, plainly, turning to her. "I know it would be hell."

"In real life or here?"

"Both," he said. "For me. Both."

"You'll never know until we give it a go."

"…What are you saying, little girl? You think you're in love with me? Is that what you're saying? I've had all of that I can stand."

"I'm certainly not little. And I'm not going to say that, I wouldn't say right now. But I'm at the point. I can fall. Would you believe that ironically, no one has seen me like this? With my shadow and my fear. And you did stay. You weren't exactly…polite, but you did stay. I find that worth falling for. This is a dream, to boot. We can take it in stride. All just one big dream."

"Because I had to. I stayed because you're my leverage."

"And you said just a moment ago that you'd have taken care of any other girl. Don't be upset, Tom. It can't be worse than the other things here. And when you see it and it's silly, you can say you felt it and thought it ridiculous. You'll have evidence for your claim."

He looked at his hands. "Well, that's true. I would, wouldn't I? I could tear it to pieces. I could paint it as the lie it is. Just as fleeting as the unreal."

Luna smiled to herself. She was sad for what he said, but this was what he was. She had stayed with him, too.

"All right. Show me."

"Come closer."

"I've had _that _before," he said, sounding bored.

"It's not just that. I warn you, that sometimes love is painful."

"Oh, that's wonderful. Just perfect for the ending of this whole fiasco." He did sit down, however. He sat right besides her and looked at her expectantly. She was suddenly the most nervous girl that ever was. Her hands were like water, all a flutter, and the sensation of her heart was unbearable, as so good it hurts kind of balance. She was very small, for this.

"Um…"

"Cold feet."

"Absolutely not."

With that, she did what she could. What she was best at. She imagined and took his hand, and then took _him_ into her life, with the blink of her eye, and this land was reflective as a mirror. Her love was…

Deep. She showed him what it was like, with her mother, and what it was like, with her father. She showed him what it was like, in the garden by the village and the woods by her house. She showed him her failed loves, like the love of Hogwarts and herself, and how the world inside of her seemed much larger than the outside.

Then she discovered friends.

In the three levels of their existence, the real life, the dream life, and Luna's dreams, in the middle, she kept his hand in hers. She didn't make it up. She didn't lie about its goodness, its ability to satisfy. Sometimes it was the opposite, in her loneliness. Then she let him feel it in small pieces.

Doses and tastes, and she felt him too, besides her and being her. It was similar, perhaps, to having something click into place, or seeing color for the first time. The color, though, could be terrible as it was beautiful. And it did start to hurt, giving her life for others, willingly, living and learning to fall, like a running silk band under the skin, and he stayed there longer than she thought he would.

_It hurt to give someone the ability to hurt you. _

Shaking violently, he pulled back, and then she knew she had lied to him.

For Luna had said she would never say that, in this time. But she didn't quite want to let him go.

They were silent for a long time, him on the other side of the fire. In that silence, she thought he had been right after all.

"You didn't like it?" she ventured, terrified of the answer.

"It's time to deal with the problem at hand. No more fairytales." He looked ragged, in pain, in a rage concealed in a Gringott's vault.

"That's all right…what do you…suggest?" she asked, hurting.

"_That_. That is what I'm suggesting. A little…dose of those feelings. I doubt a figment would survive it."

"A bottle of feeling?"

"Exactly. I can take from you your echoes, at least, of those emotions. In the manner of a pensieve. I know the spell."

"Well, it's a try. I suggest we challenge him. Flying, maybe. He'll surely come around if he believes that we are better at it."

Riddle stood up, and she promised herself that she would look at him one last time. This was a dream. Any seeds of goodness she had spied surely had to be lies. Some traces of humanity, echoes. He was handsome, though, and clever and could have been wonderful.

"I have one last…uh, request for you."

"Spit it out." He hated her. She quivered.

"Remorse. Let me feel some remorse for you and you can bottle it. I don't know if we can keep the things, but you can keep the memory of it. Keep it in the back of your mind at all times, as if keeping the bottle on your person." She hoped the rules of horcrux-breaking weren't terribly specific.

"What should I do with such a worthless thing?"

"Just in case. It may come in handy."

He smiled, still wincing. "Why not? Perfect trinket to remember you by…"

"Do you hate me?" she blurted out. She knew she possibly loved him now because she had never waned to hit a person more in her life. She was willing to be violent.

"I don't hate you. I could never hate you." It wasn't a good thing. She frowned and it was difficult to feel anything at the moment, but at his persistence, she was able to manage and soon, there were seven bottles.

She picked up the one that was a pale yellow and handed it to him. He took it with a graceless smirk.

She looked away quickly to hide her stricken expression. It was like holding a storm in a chipped teacup.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Still Applies

Chapter 9

"Are you quite sure this is safe?" Luna asked. The boat had remained the same in its pitch black glory. Tom had merely added wings. "I'm allergic to feathers…"

"Foam wings aren't as practical or aesthetically pleasing."

They had been floating about for a bit and they were both getting colder. "The baby is kicking," she muttered and had a horrible feeling she knew why. Rigor mortis all around him…she was a cheaply brought coffin.

He wasn't being friendly at all, either. Not one, little bit. He stared off in the distance, stared past her, and crossed his arms. His jaw was set and as straight as the horizon.

"I think you're being silly…" she offered. Her mood could be poor too.

"Hmm. From you, that's a compliment."

"I wasn't trying to be any way. You know that."

"I know you were trying to punish me with your vendetta. Such childish pride, to think your little, insignificant feelings are the center of the world, such self-absorption, such pitiful, clinging passive-aggressive tripe. You live for it, don't you? To live at the bequest of every one else and revel in your--."

He seemed to be so angry that he was beyond himself. She blinked, slipping.

"To show me and then hold it over my head," he said coldly, focusing back in on her like she was the worst person that he'd ever had the misfortune of meeting. .His worst enemy. "I see through you."

"To what you want to see." This had gone from bad to worst, and she had an empty, hollow feeling in her chest. She looked past him, now, and tried not to think.

He stared at her, unblinking, and it seemed as if she was dismantled by his gaze, in hateful detail. A horrible, enraged stone idol of a god. Not a real boy by any measure.

"I sincerely apologize for any misunderstanding. I didn't mean to do you any harm. That's the…that's the last thing I wanted. It's my fault."

"Shut your mouth," Tom said coldly, his arms crossed.

"You're being…a bit of a baby about this," Luna said, her long dormant feelings overriding her—and at the time, it was a realization.

And then things fell apart.

He hissed in pain before he could object to her opinion and Luna felt rather than saw the figure in the shroud race by them at such a maniac speed that the boat rocked in its wake.

She gasped at the wound in his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Do I look-."

There was a blur by the side of the boat. In retrospect, Luna would call what Pan did a barrel-roll. She merely saw that the wings were in his chubby hands and that there was a smile on his cherubic face.

"Finders, keepers," the birl said happily.

They seemed to hover for a moment, stunned, and then they fell like a stone. She lost contact with the boat completely, and she felt herself flung through the air. The gravity appeared to have multiplied with intent to make her zoom down to earth and leave a crater. What weighs more does fall faster.

Tom zoomed by her, his robes flapping behind him…well, if there was a way for robes to possibly flap eloquently with speech, that would be it.

On a broom. Where did he hide a broom, she had time to wonder, before she saw him quickly transfigure a piece of driftwood into a broom and rather carelessly tossed it at her. She grabbed for it—nearly lost it—but managed to pinch a bristle and drag it towards her.

She floated there, in midair, nearly out of her mind at the idea of her still being alive.

"Pay attention!" Tom yelled, and Luna jerked her head back just in time to avoid Pan's sword. The birl grinned at her, with eyes with something foreign and cold behind them that did not match his smile. Demon. It had to be.

Then she felt bad for it. Tom, on the other hand, was in heavy competition. Pan was a good flyer and to her surprise, so was Tom. They had to outdo each other, and the result, she feared, was both of them being undone.

Pan was like mercury, a glaze of silver, as he moved through the net and mesh of curses like a needle through cloth. It seemed as if hitting him before he got you would be an impossible feat (fate), especially with all the taunting involved.

Tom, however, was just as resourceful as he was with the spider. He nearly-nearly-so close it almost counted-got Pan when he let some curses gather behind the child as he was merrily and smugly avoided all the curses. Then he pulled them back with a simple flick of his wand.

Pieces of shroud and not-quite-blood went everywhere but Pan emerged. Somehow unharmed. Then he started to yell and flail about.

The curses must have held fragments of feelings, she observed. Peter Pan was…falling apart was the polite term. He was regressing to what he had been at the time of death, and her heart…she started to regret what they had done.

_He had just wanted to live. _

Pan seemed stuck and in pain, and Luna suddenly knew that a feeling of some sort was missing. An important one. The last key ingredient.

She felt the presence and the weigh and the feeling of life within her. Then she knew for sure what it was.

Luna raised her hand towards the struggling figure—Tom was giving no mercy this time—and thought and willed as hard as she could.

"No child born is ever unwanted," she said.

And with that, Pan fell.

Tom had stopped his countless curses to watch Pan's descent, his good robes draped lightly around his knees.

She realized, looking at him up above her, that he was angry because she…

Luna felt like she had _changed. _She used to be a Peter Pan, brought forth to be a Wendy by hardship and misfortunes, and it hadn't twisted her like it had him, all those hardships and loneliness and want. The feeling that the world has nothing to satisfy the curiosity, the heart, the mind, and it wouldn't want you, spitting you out of the womb of life unto death. As soon as possible.

She discovered that she did have something that made her, that she wouldn't change for the world. It must have been love, and she realized now, one moment too late.

He smiled lightly at her, a promise that he would remember her, and he kept that promise. Tom Riddle started to fade into the blue, the deep, and she felt the tugs of the Other Selves waking up, leaving this world.

Everyone was leaving.

She blinked and he was gone, and she had been born too late to make a real difference in his life, his fate, his end. Always dreaming, she had dreamt too late, grown up too late.

She had failed him and _felt _it, the emptiness burrowed in her chest, her heart: it carried.

Luna woke up in tears.

* * *

She thought it was over. That it was gone like the dream.

Rolf was surprised at her change, and he began to constantly chant 'Pregnancy hormones' like a mantra. Luna could feel again. In a way, Tom had saved her. Whether it was in the middle of his things to do or the last possible thing he meant to do, he had done it. She was happy with being a mother.

But she thought that was as far as it went. She should have known better. She should have known the minute her son began to kick so ferociously that she thought she'd end up with a hole in her stomach. He was very, very eager to get out.

She caught a clue when her very blonde Rolf asked her in a falsely cheerful voice, "Did anyone in your family have dark hair?"

What a lark.

What had it been like, her time in captivity? She wouldn't know, she couldn't recall. Methodical Tom had taken something away from the dream. He was always learning, just not always the right things. So late in the date did not change the fact of an act. There was a reason they had met. Free-will was made by one's nature, and what one was, one is. It was Fate, after all.

Luna tried to think of all the angles, staring up at the St. Mungo's hospital ceiling and seeing the cracks. Clever, clever Tom, going in a full circle.

When the baby was placed in her arms, looking so small, his dark hair already showing, she thought he could just be clever in his corner. He had given her a gift, no matter what his intentions…Better than the best.

What his complex, web-like intentions were Her mind thought in possibilities, and his, realities in the impossibilities. Conceding: he was the cleverest. Far more. She saw his bone-whites smile in the darkness, in the silence, in the loneliness. He had her _remorse_. What better could he find her with, even in death which always remembers, and it _seems._

When she met her son—with his eyes— little Luna was a lost girl.

To end this story on a happier note:

She was very good mother.

Credits:

"No child born is ever unwanted"-- is from the movie The Locker, J-horror.

The spiral mentions-- from Uzumaki, J-horror. There are alot of spirals in the world, seriously.

"I do unto others as they do unto me. Only worse". -- Jimmy Hoffa, I believe.

"Laugh when they're wounded and you cry while you bleed." -'Defeat You' by Smash Mouth.

-Boa-wearing is from a spork somewhere about Voldemort, so I took that line.

Peter Pan is by J.M. Barrie, and 'The cleverness of me' is his line. The three Fates were influenced by Neil Gaiman, with some additions of my own. The Lost Boys were influenced by the old movie the Brood. The vampire's less than healthy birth theory is from Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls. The disintegrating chicken image is from Robot Chicken.

I know the ending of the series indicates that Luna has two sons. I wonder what to do about it, and thought of three different endings, but I went AU for this.

I hope you guys enjoyed this. Thank you for reading, I appreciate it.


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